The Russia of Vladimir Putin is not a nice place. It may rival Soviet Russia as a bellicose polity that wants to make the world darker and dirtier … one that will stop at nothing to promoting itself and its agenda.

In sports, that means drugs. Lots and lots of performing-enhancing drugs (PEDs) for their athletes.

Under state sponsorship, it would appear, at least according to the story reported this week by the New York Times, based on conversations with the former head of the Russian anti-doping laboratory.

The guy who should have been Russia’s drug cop became its top enabler, and there went the Russians to the top of the medal standings at the Sochi Olympics — where 15 Russian medal winners were doping but went uncaught, according to the NYT source.

And what should be done about this?

The Russians should be barred from this summer’s Rio Olympics, that’s what.

They already were at risk of having their track-and-field team barred from competing in Rio, after an investigation by the World Anti-Doping Agency found all sorts of abuses.

Russia deserves a wider ban than just the track team because that would be one of the few actions that would get the attention of the bullies who run that government and would hit home with the populace — and especially Russian athletes.

Many athletes in Olympics sports get only one good chance to made a dent in the world’s biggest multi-sport competition, and that sort of penalty might get the attention of people who seem like semi-witting, go-along-to-get-along puppets, at this point.

To read the NYT story is to be boggled by the lengths to which the Russians went to win medals at Sochi– from drawing up lists of athletes who would fail drug tests during the games (without illegal intervention), to a covert program of beating the “tamper-proof” seal to urine specimens … and then, finally, to the man at the center of the story participating in a dark-of-the-night exercise which featured passing clean samples through a hole in a wall to replace the dirty ones handed over earlier.

The Russians, of course, deny it as the usual fantastical stuff from the West, trying to diminish their achievements, blah blah blah, and have described the NYT source as a “turncoat”. And turncoats will say anything, right? At least, until they die suddenly.

Thing is, the sports world has been through this before.

The Russians and several of their Eastern European satellites, during the four-plus decades of the Cold War, systematically cheated. East Germany was the top student of this system, despite a population of only 16 million, rising to second in the Summer Olympics medals table in 1976, 1980 and 1988 and to second in the Winter Olympics of 1972, 1976, 1980 and 1988 — and to first in 1984. And, remember, East Germany had no mountains and, thus, no Alpine skiers.

After the fall of the Iron Curtain, East German sources revealed what everyone had long suspected — that the country had cheated systematically for years, mostly to demonstrate the superiority of their methods and political system.

We continue to see failed tests for PEDs across the global spectrum of sports, including in the U.S. This individual, that individual, maybe a cycling team …

What sets the Russians apart is that the cheating has governmental sanction and backing. This is a return to the ugly past of the Olympics movement, and that cannot be allowed to stand.

Let’s have Wada and the International Olympic Committee study the testimony of the NYT source … and if he is found to be credible (and we assume he will be, given what we know about the Russians and sports) …

And then boot them out of Rio.